Inuyasha's Eternal Joy
by nessthing
Summary: They never found the last shard. Inuyasha was forced to remain a half-demon while Kagome aged and died. Will he find peace at last? One-shot, kinda sad, but heartwarming in it's own little way.


**Nessthing:** This is oh-so short.

**Fallen Angel:** And oh-so sad.

**Nessthing**: While we're on the subject of sad things, I don't own Inuyasha.

Silence permeated the household. Oddly, there was no chorus of chickadees to herald the dawn of another crisp winter day. They remained silent, as if in respect for the loss the village had suffered during the night.

Inuyasha could smell it, the stench of mortality hanging in the air. His Kagome was dead.

She had lived a long life, choosing to remain with the time and the man she loved. As if by some cruel, cosmic joke, Naraku had possessed all but one of the remaining jewel shards, the last seeming to evade them. They never found it, Inuyasha's wish was never granted. He was forced to remain a half-demon, cursed with this lengthy lifespan while she continued to age. He often wondered if the jewel was punishing him for his past sins.

As the hanyou gazed down at Kagome's body, her white hair framing her face like a halo, the corners of her mouth curled into a gentle smile, he had a thought. He could end it all now, no need for a natural death. He could join her immediately! No. Even if his ended up on the same plane as her soul, she wouldn't approve. Knowing her, she would want him to live on and find another. One who could show him a love she no longer could. He had no desire to love again, if anyone else even _could_ even love him.

Inuyasha wanted so much to be able to grow old with her. In all these years, he had seen her mature into the wise woman he now knelt before. She had aged gracefully to seventy-eight; he couldn't have aged more than a decade.

The demi-demon leaned towards to his beloved. He remembered the day she freed him from the arrow's spell. He could remember their first kiss. She had been so surprised, and so innocent. He could remember the day she brought up marriage, and the day they were wed. They decided against having children until that last elusive Shikon shard was found and he could be human. That had never happened. There was no great legacy of Inuyasha and Kagome, just a second-rate dwelling and a mourning demon.

Inuyasha gathered Kagome in his arms. She had given specific instructions to be buried just north of the Bone-eater's well. He was to bury her near the well, go to the present with the jewel, inform her brother of her passing, and then continue the search for the remaining shard if he so wished.

He stepped out of their home. The sun was high and the sky was devoid of its usual winter gloom. Today was a rare day of sun, betraying the solemn atmosphere the village had assumed upon catching sight of Kagome's body in her husband's arms.

"Do you see that?" One villager murmured, "Lady Kagome is dead."

Inuyasha didn't yearn to stay around and hear more. Damn his superhuman hearing; another aspect of his demonic identity he wanted to wish away. He rushed past the gathering crowd to the clearing of the Bone-eater's well, clutching Kagome closer to him. Near the end of the crowd, there was a little girl, no more than five, with those big chocolate eyes that made Inuyasha's heart melt. In her hands, she held a wooden shovel. She stepped forward. Trembling, she held out the shovel for him to take.

"I..." her high little voice whispered, "wouldn't want your hands to get dirty." She thrust her arms out with the item and looked as if she was going to cry.

He took the shovel from the shaking peasant girl. "Thanks... kid." He said in a voice, deep and hoarse with unshed tears.

Inuyasha continued his one-man funerary procession to his love's gravesite. His bare feet crunched on the freshly fallen snow. The ground would be frozen and hard to move. It didn't matter, this was her last wish; he couldn't deny her this.

The hanyou burrowed a casket-shaped hole in the cold, hard soil. It tore him up to place her in the frigid earth. He couldn't have found words, if he tried, to describe the anguish dropping the first shovelful of soil over her corpse caused him.

His job done, and jewel in hand, Inuyasha hurdled toward the well's bottom, a familiar web of magic rising to cushion his fall.

He arrived in the Higurashi well-house. Kagome had been given no grave-marker, but she was near. Inuyasha could feel it in his bones.

He ascended the wooden stairs to the stone tile surface at the top. The sky in this time was grey and overcast. An atmosphere much more suited to the somber events preceding this visit.

The Higurashi family was just sitting down for lunch when a rapping was heard at the door.

"I'll get it grandpa, don't bother yourself."

"Fine, fine."

A young girl opened the door to see a man with long white hair and... dog ears?

"I need to speak with Souta Higurashi. It's important." The man said.

"W-who are you?"

"That doesn't matter! Tell him Inuyasha wants to speak with him!"

The girl ran off into the house. An elderly man garbed in the style of a Shinto priest came to the door.

"Inuyasha. I expected you to arrive soon. I'm afraid you gave my granddaughter quite a scare." The man said, eerily resembling Kaede, another reminder of human life's fragility.

"Then you know why I'm here. Kagome has..."

"I expected as much. I'm sorry."

"I didn't come here for your pity. I'm only doing this because it was what Kagome wanted."

The aged Souta laughed. "I see you're still as stubborn as ever, Inuyasha. As long as you're here, I have something to give you." Souta searched around in his pocket for something. His hand emerged holding a small piece of paper, tied with a string. He handed the parcel to Inuyasha.

"What's this?" The hanyou fumbled around with the cord.

"Please, don't open it here. Wait until you are back home. This may very well be the last time I see you."

"Thanks, I guess." He said. "Goodbye Souta."

"Goodbye Inuyasha." Souta walked back to the house, and was immediately bombarded with questions about the man in red with the dog-ears. Evidently, his granddaughter had spread the word.

"He was just... an old friend." The old-man said with a smile.

Inuyasha crawled out of the well into the sun-drenched clearing. The sun reflecting off of the snow gave the area an almost heavenly quality, until his eyes came to rest on the one spot where sunlight was absent, the upturned earth of Kagome's grave, a cold slap of reality.

"I hate this place." The statement rumbled in the demon's throat.

He heard the villagers chitchatting about the apparent ins-and-outs of Kagome's death.

Walking to the outskirts of the forest, he overheard one particularly interesting outlook on the situation.

"She was very old. I suppose it was her time." One said.

"Nah, the demon probably murdered the old bird in her sleep. She was just a tool he used to slake his lust, and when she got to old, criiiiich." Inuyasha guessed that sound was accompanied with a gesture similar to cutting one's throat. Oh, rest assured, throats would be cut.

He bounded toward the peasant to whom the latter remark belonged to and lifted him by his collar.

"What did you say?!" The furious hanyou demanded, thrusting his face at the terrified villager.

"I-I said you probably murdered your wife!" He shouted, as if he wanted his last living declaration to insult Inuyasha.

"How dare you?" Inuyasha asked slowly, raising him with one hand while the other bared its claws. "How dare you suspect-"

"No please!" It was the little girl with Kagome's eyes. The one who gave him the shovel came running out to the pair. "Don't hurt him!" She begged, her hands folded, tears streaming down her face. "I gave you my shovel, please let my father go!"

Something in that struck a chord with Inuyasha. He narrowed his eyes at the man in his grasp. "You are one lucky bastard to have such a compassionate daughter. You don't deserve it." He threw the man at the little girl's feet and sped off in the other direction.

No more. He could take no more. He didn't want to live anymore.

"I'll just cut myself to ribbons right here." He said, falling to his knees on the snow plastered ground. "No one will cry for me." Maybe the little girl... with the kind eyes...The little girl who had helped.

But before he was going to end his life, he remembered. The parcel Souta had given him. "No sense in dieing and not-knowing what it was." He slipped the string off and unfolded the paper.

"No. It can't be."

But it was. There, in his palm, was the last shard of the sacred jewel.

How did he have it? Why didn't Kagome know? What was it doing in that time?

Inuyasha realized the futility of those questions as he ran his thumb over the chip, marring the face of the Jewel of Four Souls. All would be right now. He glided the shard into its place. It fit seamlessly as it joined forming the entire gem.

His hands shook holding the Jewel, and he truly wept for the first time in decades. There was no need for his blood to join his tears in the snow now.

"I wish..." His voice was strong in contrast to the emotion shown in his face. "I wish to regain my lost time and be happy!"

No great glimmer of light, no grand song. The Jewel simply chipped into a fine powder and blew away.

Ordinarily, Inuyasha would've thought the Jewel had let him down. That it had not granted him his wish. But he could feel it. His claws shrank to fingernails; his platinum hair dyed itself a deep black, then wisps of grey threaded their way in. His skin wrinkled and he could feel his last moments of existence flying by.

Then Inuyasha spoke, in a voice barely above a whisper, "Thank you."

His body collapsed on the ground turned to dust. It soared with the wind, taking the same route as the Jewel, and mingled at last with the cold, crystalline powder carpeting the landscape.

Inuyasha had found his happiness. He had found his eternal joy at last.


End file.
